Halloween with recycling and creativity

Trayce Melo

Halloween, as Halloween is known in Brazil, is one of the most popular holidays in North American culture, usually celebrated on October 31st. With the spread of North American pop culture around the world, Brazilians began to participate in the festival, with customs such as decorating houses with spooky decorations and participating in costume parties more common today.

In Belém, a house in the Bengui neighborhood was completely decorated with this theme. Craft couple Camila Miranda, 48, and Lucas Freitas, 49, have been putting together Halloween decorations since 2014 using recyclable materials. The audience, especially children, are mesmerized by the sound effects and characters typical of a horror movie that are shown in front of the house.

Camila Miranda works with plaster molds and a few years ago had the idea to turn her own house into a setting worthy of a horror film. This year, she and her husband decided to increase the interior and exterior decorations and started the preparations more than a month before the date.

«We work with plaster casts of hands and feet, of babies, children and adults to represent these family bonds. But during the Halloween season, we take a break from this craft and dedicate at least three weeks to producing this material,” he says.

«We start going around every day looking for recyclable material to make the decorations. Since we know that trash accumulates at these recycling points, we go there and collect it. The materials we collect the most are sponges, paper, plastic bottles, broken mannequins and old dolls,» he explains.

She says the tradition started in 2014 when her children were children. «It started because we had a habit of doing it when we lived in São Paulo and our children were children and they really liked it. At first it was a simple decoration, but since 2017, when the apartment’s Halloween party started, we started to organize here at home. On the day of the community party, many children come here in costumes, cousins ​​of the residents and friends from outside come,» he said.

«That day we play puzzles, we distribute more than 200 packages of chocolate to the children, just here at my house. They start distributing at 7pm, crazy that day. The way they come in costume is an amazing thing. There are really many of them. Then they are around the condominium until around midnight,» he explains.

TRASH ART

The craftsman says that 70% of the material used in the decoration is recyclable. «About 70% is recycled material, 30% is impossible to escape. In this case, it is information about the dolls, such as the dolls’ eyes, heads, and hands. I already had things from another Halloween, but we always buy new things and recycle as well, but our spending is very low on those details,” he says.

«We like to improvise, make art out of trash, this story of art out of trash really affects our lives.» Because when we work with crafts that are sustainable, that have a significant memory, that are meant to last forever, we understand that they must be eternal. So this will not be destroyed, this is not a doll that I have to throw away next year. And we try to work with what is biodegradable and will not harm in any way. For example, we do not use balloons at all in our decorations because we understand that they are very harmful to the environment. After the date has passed, we save everything for next year,» he concludes.